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OF THE 


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| Theological Seminary, | 


PRINCETON, N. J. 


BT 1101 .F67 2862 
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The Hormution of Christian Belief, 


THE FORMATION 


or 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 


W/V 


In all estates I know of no heart’s ease but to believe. If thou art not 
clear on that point, yet depend and resolve to stay by God, yea, to stay 
on him till he show himself unto thee. Press this upon thy soul, for there 
is not such another charm for all its fears and disquiet.—Luiauroy. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
GEORGE W. CHILDS, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, 
Nos. 628 AND 630 CHESTNUT STREET. 


1862, 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 
GHORGE W. CHILDS, 


tn the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 


HENRY B. ASHMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, 
Nos. 1102 and 1104 Sansom Street. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER. I. 


GENERAL VIEW OF RELIGIOUS DOUBT AND STATEMENT OF THE 
NEED OF CERTAINTY AS TO A RULE OF ACTION, . ‘ 


CHAPTER II. 


THE RECEIVED SYSTEM OF MORALS BASED ON THE CHRISTIAN 
SYSTEM; AND REMARKS ON AN INCAUTIOUS APPLICATION 
OP MENTAL SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY, ° ° : . 


CHAPTER III. 


DOUBTERS OF CHRISTIANITY DIVIDED INTO THREE CLASSES 
AND DESCRIBED, . : < * : : ; : 


CHAPTER IV. 


CONSIDERATIONS PERTINENT TO THE SUBJECT AND IMPORTANT 
TO THE INQUIRER INTO CHRISTIAN TRUTH, . . . 


21 


42 


52 


eee 


Vill CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER V. 


SHE DOUBTER DIRECTED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF HIS DOUBTS 
TO A CLOSE ADHERENCE TO SCRIPTURE PRECEPT AS THE 
RULE OF LIFE, e . ‘ . a . . 


CHAPTER, .V 1: 


SCRIPTURE ENCOURAGEMENT AND CONSOLATION FOR INVOLUN- 
TARY DOUBTERS, . : ; : : d : : 


CHAPTER VII. 


GRADUAL FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER AND BELIEF 
TO BE EXPECTED FROM OBEDIENCE TO SCRIPTURE PRECEPT, 


61 


81 


CHAP eT Exe al: 


GENERAL VIEW OF RELIGIOUS DOUBT AND STATEMENT OF 
THE NEED OF CERTAINTY AS TO A RULE OF ACTION. 


Dovst is uncertainty as to truth or fact. In the 
sense in which the word is used in the following 
pages, and simplifying the meaning given by a 
standard authority, it may be more particularly 
defined, a suspense of judgment respecting truth, 
arising from defect of knowledge. With reference 
to most subjects of investigation, we rest with 
a degree of steadiness and assurance on discover- 
ed truth. The progress to it may have been 
slow. One erroneous supposition after another 
has been made and its fallacy detected, ingenious 
hypotheses and probable but untenable theories 


have been repeatedly rejected for others scarcely 


9 


_ 


10 THE FORMATION OF 


less defective, until each struggling, forward 
movement has at length brought us to a solid 
and elevated platform. Thus having once planted 
our foot on the heights of conviction, it is for us 
to look back on the steep and winding way by 
which we have reached them,—on the dark and 
tangled wilderness of ignorance, or the attractive 
but indirect path of speculation, which had often 
conducted us, baffled and wearied, to the point 
whence we had set out. But, having passed 
through this process, we have no desire, as we 
lack the ability, to retrace it. We have gained 
the summit, and truth lies at once and forever 
outspread and illumined to our view. 

The application of the discoveries of natural 
science can be lost only by circumstances inde- 
pendent of their own influence and operation. 
These discoveries become permanently embodied 
in the practical arts, and are traced in the in- 


creased skill and facilitated labour of the artisan, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 11 


and the more general diffusion of the conveniences 
and luxuries of life. In moral science, the case 
is not widely different. Though there is not here 
the certainty of demonstration, and axioms must 
give place to suppositions, still, probabilities be- 
come generally admitted and adopted, and, for the 
most part, are little questioned or discussed. 

But, in the science of Theology, the influence 
of perceived and conceded truth is on many minds 
much more imperfect and limited. Those who 
admit Revelation to be true, as those who receive 
only natural religion, return, to a certain extent, 
to the truths which had formed their starting 
point, glance uneasily at them, and hold to them 
with a somewhat loose and failing grasp. Though 
these truths are adapted to affect materially both 
modes of thought and principles of action, over 
neither, in the mass of mankind, do we discern 
any marked or abiding influence. The deist 


. 
assures you of his belief in the existence of a 


12 THE FORMATION OF 


God, and will usually concede that God is wise, 
powerful, benevolent, and just. Butin how many 
deists do you see the development of their volun- 
tary admissions? How many of them, acknow- 
ledging their relation to God and their resulting 
obligations, are reverent, truthful, temperate, cha- 
ritable? Can you find among them one who 
bears the “aspect serene” of that calm and hum- 
ble confidence which may well mark the man who 
believes himself in the presence and at the dispo- 
sal of a great and good Being? In those who 
admit that God not only exists, but that he has 
given a revelation to man, is often even more dis- 
tinctly perceived the inoperativeness of belief. 
We should stand amazed, but for the commonness 
of the sight, that millions in Christian or what 
are called Christian lands, who avow a belief in a 
revelation from the Creator of the universe, an- 
nouncing a future state of reward and punishment, 


and the way of securing the one and avoiding the 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 1:3 


other, should live with so prevailing an uncon- 
cern on this subject, with a disregard so entire of 
the rules of conduct laid down in the Bible, that 
it might be supposed that there was in them nei- 
ther adaptation to their condition, nor obligation 
to their obedience. “There is not any,” says the 
author of Religio Medici, “ of such a fugitive faith 
and unstable belief as a Christian.” 

We think we can correctly refer this singular 
inconclusiveness of religious belief to a natural 
and moral cause. To the latter we shall have 
occasion to advert in another portion of our dis- 
cussion. The former is the difficulty of holding 
fully and continuously to the mind a subject which 
pertains to another sphere of existence, and to 
agencies of which we have imperfect cognizance, 
and which are as much removed from the percep- 
tion of our physical, as they are from the com- 
prehension of our intellectual nature. It has 


been said that the evidence of facts natural and 


2% 


14 THE FORMATION OF 


miraculous related in the Bible is as readily re- 
ceived as that conveyed by our senses, or afforded 
by eredible witnesses of our own times. But a 
careful observation of the workings of men’s minds 
in regard to this subject, tends to disprove the 
assertion. We may decide that any statement of 
the Bible is to be received as credible; we may 
acknowledge ourselves convinced by prepondera- 
ting testimony ; but still the kind of belief and con- 
viction differs from the easy, confident, unques- 
tioning credence given to facts, which, however 
singular, regard natural events and do not violate 
the order which we have observed. It is true 
we may again and again represent to ourselves 
that this order of nature, viewed in relation to 
Him who established it, cannot, as we conceive it, 
mean a permanent, unchangeable arrangement,— 
that the system adopted by the Omniscient for 
the good of man, may by the Omnipotent be in- 


terrupted or destroyed. Still, there remains a 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 15 


doubt which the evidence we have seems insuffi- 
a doubt that the order has been 
at any time interrupted, and that the Creator still 
upholds and directs the work of his hands. The 


proof of the miraculous is contained in the Bible 


cient to remove 


alone, and the nature of the proof is twofold—ex- 
ternal and internal. An acute thinker, as well as 
Christian philosopher, remarks that “ the evidence 
derived from the internal character of a religion, 
whatever may be its value within its proper limits, 
is, as regards the divine origin of the religion, 
purely negative. It may prove in certain cases 
that a religion has not come from God; but it is in 
no case sufficient to prove that it has come from 
him.” At least, it seems to us incontrovertible, 
that however much collateral support Christianity 
may receive from the internal evidence of its truth, 
it must rely for the main body of its proof on the 
external or historical alone. 


But in this department the sources of perplexity 


16 THE FORMATION OF 


are the most numerous. We pass by with only 
the mention, the changes and errors that, in a 
period of more than two thousand years, have 
crept in by the hand of the copyist alone; and the 
questioned genuineness of some of the books of 
Scripture. Much more serious difficulties arise 
from the more recent historical investigations and 
discoveries of science. Ancient and modern as- 
tronomy, geology, the records of China, India and 
Egypt, have furnished the most forcible argu- 
ments against the truth of- Scripture. We be- 
lieve that they have been, for the most part, 
fully and forever disposed of. Still the habit of 
mind remains which the discussion induced; and 
scepticism, expelled from one stronghold, returns 
with other weapons to attack some more unguard- 
ed point. 

In the interpretation of Scripture, the clearest 
and most candid minds have come to quite opposite 


conclusions. Soame Jenyns, Locke, and others 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. A 


affirmed that if miracles once attested the truth of 
Christianity, Christianity in its turn now proves 
the miracles; and lately we observed that Albert 
Gallatin, alluding to the teachers of certain opi- 
nions, remarked, “‘ They say, we believe i spite of 
the miracles; but I say, I believe Jdecause of the 
miracles.”* Where do allegory, parable, and 
poetry end, and how shall we decide where fact 
begins,—that simple statement, that unadorned 
truth, upon which our all of peace and hope de- 
pends? How shall we understand the inspiration 
of the Scriptures, and distinguish aright miracu- 
lous from natural agencies? The miracles of the 
New Testament become “a galling perplexity,” 
viewed in certain aspects, and disconnected from 
“those undefined moral congruities,” which, it has 
been remarked, sustain our belief far better than 
any proofs in line. “ We can neither rid ourselves 


of the attesting evidence, nor are prepared to yield 


* See Sermon on “ Believers and Witnesses,” by Dr. J. W. 


Alexander. 


18 THE FORMATION OF 


ourselves to it; and at this moment the Christian 
argument is an intolerable torment to hundreds of 
cultivated minds around us.” 

It is true that many questions, and among them 
some to which we have referred, have little prac- 
tical influence, and are not worth, save in one 
particular, the argument they have occasioned. 
But that is the vital one. It is not the intrinsic 
value of the question, but its position, its relation 
to what claims to be a Divine revelation. It is 
truth we want; not solely the truth that applies 
to our own conduct,—the utilitarian truth, so to 
speak, that rounds and perfects the formula of our 
faith, but the truth that God declares, the truth 
which we are to hold eternally, and which is to 
uplift us forever into holiness and peace. Dr. Ar- 
nold well states the fact as to these abounding per- 
plexities. “There are,” he remarks, “difficulties 
in the way of all religion which can never be fully 
solved by human powers. All that can be done in- 


tellectually,” he fearlessly, as is his wont, adds, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 19 


“is to point out the equal or greater difficulties of 
atheism or scepticism, and this is enough to justify 
a good man’s understanding in being a believer.” 
And yet on this all important topic we seem 
scarcely able to pause here. We want a proof 
unattainable, perhaps, from the nature of the sub- 
ject. This great, this terrible mystery of the 
universe; this unsolved riddle of existence; this 
ever propounded inquiry into the past; this never 
ended searching into the dim, distant future,— 
what are they, and whereunto will they tend? 
Shall we by searching find out God? If we feel 
after him, shall we find him? This system full 
of unexplained and wonderful fact; these traces 
of some ruling and guiding power, and yet these 
other instances of an orphan, a forsaken world! 
The soul of man, spiritual, progressive, and yet 
apparently in its lowest form removed much 
farther from the image of Him after whom it was 
created, than it is from the higher instinct of the 


brute, or than this in turn is from the more re- 


2() THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 


markable phenomena of vegetable life! If we 
discover one beautiful and recognizable truth, its 
application will apparently fail in seemingly analo- 
gical cases. We wander blindfold, discouraged, 
weary and heart-sick. Where shall be our resting- 
place? “Thus,” says a before quoted writer, “a 
man may be perfectly unable to acquire a firm and 
undoubting belief of the great truths of religion, 
whether natural or revealed. He may be perplex- 
ed with doubts all his days, nay, his fears that the 
Gospel should not be true may be stronger than 
his hopes that it will.” | 

But whatever may be a man’s uncertainty re- 
specting his future condition, he has present and 
pressing need of a standard of conduct which will 
secure to him the greatest amount of happiness, 
which, if the Christian religion be true, will at 
least not be in conflict with its principles, and 
which the approval of the majority of honest and 
enlightened thinkers presents as the best and 


most universally applicable rule of life. 


CLEDALP Tike Re acl. 


THE RECEIVED SYSTEM OF MORALS BASED ON THE CHRIS- 
TIAN SYSTEM; AND REMARKS ON AN INCAUTIOUS APPLI- 
CATION OF MENTAL SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY. 


Iv is relative to the main object of our discus- 
sion to review here briefly the history of the in- 
quiry into what shall constitute a universal rule 
of life; and to state the answer, so conformable, 
or, rather, so identical with the teachings of Chris- 
tianity, which, after ages of patient seeking, the 
mind of man has at length obtained. We desire, 
also, to consider, in connection with this subject, 
the bearing of the study of Mental Science in its 
application to Theology, or, as it is usually termed, 
Metaphysical Theoloey—on the condition of dowks 


which we have endeavoured to describe. It may 
3 


pays THE FORMATION OF 


savour of presumption in the writer, who has only 
that superficial knowledge which some general at- 
tention to a few of the more popular philosophical 
works, lectures, and reviews can supply, to offer 
individual impressions on this subject. But it is 
a kind of investigation which is often resorted to 
by earnest and cautious inquirers into the truth of 
the Christian religion,and seems, therefore, to claim 
from us a special attention. One of the more mod- 
ern systems of speculative theology places the truth 
in the assent of human consciousness; another, ap- 
plying in its peculiar mode reason to the support of 
Scripture, brings the statements of revelation to 
rest on rational grounds; and a recently enunciated 
theory asserts that “the primary and proper ob- 
ject of criticism is not Religion, natural or reveal- 
ed, but the human mind in its relation to Reli- 
gion.” These views differing widely, indeed 
almost conflicting in their development, have still 


a common point of attraction to the seeker after 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 23 


religious truth. They seem to hold out the pros- 
pect of at least a transfer of perplexity from the 
mystery of the Divine to that of the human na- 
ture. If, as affirmed, we can have no knowledge 
of things as they are in themselves, but only as 
they appear to us, an end is at once put to much 
questioning into unseen and eternal things. If 
the mind is not instructed as to its higher inves- 
tigations by these views, they yet have the ap- 
pearance of furnishing to it the full scope of possi- 
ble knowledge, and of thereby reconciling it to its 
essential and connate incapacity to apprehend in 
ordinary mode any spiritual truth. 

To ascertain and state clearly the laws which 
govern mind, and to define the limits of their 
operation, has seemed, and justly, a most needful 
process to pass through, before we listen to argu- 
ment and accept evidence on which that mind is 
to sit in judgment. Accordingly, as if called 


forth by the magnitude of the interests involved 


24 THE FORMATION OF 


in the subject, in no department of science do we 
find displayed more vigour and acumen of intellect 
and more untiring industry. As we review the 
history of mental philosophy, especially of that 
portion of it which treats of the action of mind 
upon the principles of right and wrong, we gaze 
in wonder on the vast field, stretching back into 
the dim vista of far antiquity, and every where 
marked by giant foot-prints. We approach it 
with a timid and faltering step, and yet must 
essay to find for ourselves and point to the in- 
quiring the one path, which, of so many cut with 
wondrous skill and _ toil, alone conducts to the 
highway of truth, and affords the clearest view 
of the far distant temple of Faith and Peace. 

The study in Greece of the theory of morals, is 
placed by a modern writer at the rise of the Stoic 
and Epicurean schools. He considers Socrates, 
Plato, and Aristotle to have been teachers of vir- 


tue rather than searchers after truth. They 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 25 


were subtile reasoners and eloquent writers; pur- 
sued the truth with an honest eagerness which 
might well put to shame many a self-seeking 
and vain-glorious philosopher of modern times; 
and fervently loved the beautiful and good. But 
no debate as to moral questions appears to have 
arisen in their time. When controversies arose 
at a later period, the earnest and simple character 
of moral belief seemed to dwindle into a system 
of fine drawn distinctions and fantastic notions of 
an impossible perfection. In time, and especially 
by the Romans of the Augustan period, philoso- 
phy came to be cultivated as a recreation from the 
severer labours of state or camp, or as an elegant 
addition to historic research and the creations of 
poetry and art. To a still honoured few, the old 
question of duty stood forth with undiminished 
prominence, and caring only for truth, they sought 


with admirable, and to us, in these Christian 


3* 


2.6 THE FORMATION OF 


times, melancholy persistence, “a solid foundation 
for the Rule of Life.” 

That solid foundation was laid and disclosed 
forever to man; but the schoolmen of the twelfth 
century, with some marked exceptions, may be 
said to have ignored it altogether in the formation 
of their systems. The Christianity of the age was 
corrupt, and the cloistered divines who taught it 
were, for the most part, deprived of the ordinary 
means of mental enlightenment. They had not a 
healthful intercourse with mankind, nor a stimu- 
lating and developing acquaintance with other 
countries and the business of active life. Their, 
in some cases, beautifully constructed mental ma- 
chinery lacked the oil of human sympathy, and 
those checks and balance wheels which competi- 
tion and comparison with other minds, and the 
varied study of general literature and art would 
have supplied. Their meditations were of a purely 


intellectual, but morbid and unpractical cast. 


a 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 27 


Acute and ingenious reasoning upon profitless 
topics, or a mystic, imaginative, enthusiastic ad- 
vocacy of a strictly unselfish and unrewarded 
virtue, characterize the ethical remains of that 
period. 

Leaving the discussions of the Materialists 
concerning the relation of the soul to space, and 
its division into a rational and animal soul, we 
come to the long continued controversies between 
the Nominalists and the Realists, originating in 
fact with Greek philosophers, and carried on in 
various forms and with more or less vigour, until a 
recent period, when, passing from England to 
Germany, they there became political questions, 
and aggravated the bitterness of secular and eccle- 
siastical animosity. for any valuable moral re- 
sult, these controversies were only a waste of in- 
tellectual strength. They trained, by a somewhat 
harsh and excessive discipline, the reasoning 
faculty, but could not furnish the full and ade- 


quate sphere for its exercise. 


28 THE FORMATION OF 


The period of modern moral philosophy is, we 
believe, generally considered to begin with the 
system of Hobbes. His theory, making judgment 
concerning right and wrong, merit and demerit, 
the decision of human law and the regulation of a 
majority ; the compensation theory of Mandeville; 
the fitness of Clarke; the conformity to the true 
nature of things of Wollaston; the utility of 
Hume; the selfish theory of Paley; the almost 
denial of the moral faculty by Adam Smith, gave 
way, as we approach our time, to juster views of 
the nature of mind, and to sounder and simpler 
depending theories. It came to be understood, 
that to philosophize was, according to the beauti- 
ful definition of Sir James Mackintosh, zo simplify 
securely. It was at length recognized as an 
ultimate truth, that the moral faculty—conscience 
—the law of God written on the heart, conveys to 
every man the sentiment of right and wrong, the 
approval of the one and the disapproval of the 


other. The moral faculty is, therefore, the basis 


—— = rc el! TC eee 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 29 


of moral science; and the rule or standard of the 
moral faculty is, the revealed will of God. “If 
there be a Deity, he must rule, and if he rule, his 
will must be law.” Thus religion and morality 
have the same obligation, and the latter is sepa- 
rable from the former, only as a part from the 
whole. Itis conceded that “it is absolutely essen- 
tial to ethical science that it should contain prin- 
ciples, the authority of which must be recognized 
by men of every conceivable variety of religious 
opinion.” And these principles are precisely the 
ereat general ones which are admitted in every 
form of Christian belief. If pure deism or atheism 
have a morality, it must be, and never has been 
other than the morality of the Bible. There is no 
tenable theory of morals but that which is based 
on the intuitive perceptions of conscience. There 
is none which does not assent to the scripture state- 
ment of the originally accurate knowledge of the 


Divine will, conferred on our first parents; the 


30 THE FORMATION OF 


subsequent corruption of the nature and moral 
perceptiveness of man; and the new revelation, 
or, as it has been termed, republication of that 
will as the rule of life, the law, standard, or cri- 
terion of all moral judgments. Those who have 
never come into possession of that law, have still 
the original faculty, and are “a law unto them- 
selves.” The more important principles of this 
law do not vary with climate and time. It isa 
law, which, in the case of many unchristianized 
nations, is strengthened by some traditionary and 
partial knowledge of God’s will, by all that they 
can gather from the analogies of nature and the 
course of human experience, and by the seemingly 
inextinguishable hope of a holier and happier 
future. The Scripture settles the question of their 
obligation. Their responsibility is coincident with 
their moral perceptions; or, perhaps, more strictly, 
with the use of the means of improvement which 


are at their disposal. “He that knew not his Lord’s 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 31 


will”—knew it not in its fullest revealed extent, but 
had still intuitive perceptions of right and wrong— 
“and did commit things worthy of stripes”—things 
fairly in contradiction to those perceptions—“ shall 
be beaten with few stripes’—shall receive a re- 
compense proportioned to his offence. 

Some of the changes which we have observed 
in the theory of morals, may be noted in the 
history of the progress of Theology, in addition to 
its own separate and peculiar phases. After the 
ereat Protestant reaction had had time to settle 
and spread itself, and disturbed and contend- 
ing principles had begun to assume the shape 
and dimensions of a Bible faith, there was observ- 
able a wonderful simplicity, a sound and logical 
thinking on all subjects of possible investigation, 
and a humble and reverent, at the same time 
deliberate and intelligent withdrawal from all dis- 
cussion of matters lying outside of the recognized 


limits of the human understanding. Faith be- 


Be 4s THE FORMATION OF 


van to stand less in the wisdom of men, and 
more in the power of God. In later times, 
many of our reasoners have, we fear, lost some- 
what of this characteristic of sound philosophy, 
and have stepped aside from their hardly won 
vantage ground. Involving themselves in the 
metaphysical discussions of Germany, they have 
gone back in no small degree into the darkness 
whence their predecessors, after so long and 
tedious a groping, had fully emerged. The lan- 
guage and mode of thought of the German phi- 
losophy have affected much of our religious 
literature. We have an undue multiplication of 
terms, which designate not substance nor reality, 
but modes of reasoning. We have definitions, 
which are an assemblage of words rather than of 
thoughts or facts, which vary language indeed, 
but do little towards conveying a tangible signifi- 
cation. Such language as really bears a meaning 


is so often vaguely and inappropriately used, that 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 33 


to the ordinary reader, untrained in dialectic exer- 
cise, it becomes unintelligible and vapid. “ What 
is Scripture,” exclaims a writer in a late number of 
the North British Review, “when opposed to an 
unanswerable syllogism! Volumes of absurd cer- 
tainties,—of nonsense demonstrations, have sprung 
from the unlucky usage of applying terms proper 
only to mathematical reasoning, to moral and 
theological problems. What meaning can cleave 
to the word finite, in many of its usual applica- 
tions?” We weary in speculative theology of 
perpetual definitions and hair-splitting differences. 
In pursuing a truth beyond comprehension, it 
sometimes happens, says Pierre Bernard, that 
definitions and principles are changed and falsified 
at every stage of the process. Most writers on 
undemonstrable science are “tempted and lost” by 
definitions. To define is to limit, to circumseribe, 
to reduce a fact, an idea, to the limit of individual 


intelligence. How momentous a thing it then 
4 


84 THE FORMATION OF 


becomes thus to handle truth, to present our own 
conceptions of the phenomena of our spiritual 
existence and relations! That man is mad, says 
a Latin writer, who would break the weight of 
ereat things by the littleness of words.* 

That which is absolutely invisible will not be 
seen, though you strain after it through the most 
powerful telescope. That which is absolutely in- 
accessible will not be reached, though you cut 
with infinite pains your way up the steepest and 
loftiest mountain in hope to attain to it. The 
limits to our investigations are imposed as well by 
the subject as by our own powers; or, stated in 
another form, there is in every mind, even the 
most untutored, a consciousness to some limit of 

a limit set by God, where the 


material and immaterial, the sensible and spiritual, 


those powers, 


meet. ‘ Reason does not deceive us, if we will 


a . . ff . . ee . 
* Hominem ay gs qui Verborum minutiis rerum frangit 


pondera.—Gellius, quoted in Bacon’s Essays. 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 35 


only read her witness aright, and Reason herself 
gives us warning when we are in danger of read- 
ing it wrong. The light that is within us is not 
darkness, only it cannot illuminate that which is 
beyond the sphere of its rays.” 

Hence the profitless character of discussions 
concerning many divine and eternal truths. It is 
reasoning ever in a circle rather than the progres- 
sive movement towards conviction and belief. I 
infer a God from “the works that are seen.” I 
infer also from the general aspect and contrivance 
of things that he is wise, powerful, and good; and 
from these characteristics it must ensue that he is 
just. In his message to man he confirms what I 
had supposed, and declaring the incomprehensi- 
bility of his being, he yet reveals those qualities 
of his nature which form the basis of my reve- 
rence for his will, and of my obligation to obe- 
dience. It is in relation to my apprehension of 


God of comparatively little moment whether, with 


36 THE FORMATION OF 


Aquinas and Archbishop King, I consider these 
as only attributes in the sense of denoting the 
effects of God’s dealing, not as qualities or modes 
of his own being;—or whether, with the quoter of 
this view, I believe that “these partial represen- 
tations of the Divine consciousness, though they 
cannot convey the absolute nature of God, have 
each of them a regulative purpose to fulfil in the 
training of the mind of man, and dimly indicate 
some corresponding reality in the Divine nature.” 
“‘ God is a spirit ;” and here, so far as his essential 
or personal nature is concerned, I must stop. 
But I crave to learn how I may interpret the 
appearances of nature and the declarations of 
Scripture, so as to obtain, if possible, some defi- 
nite conception, some governing view of the Being 
who is the first object of my thought, and may 
be the first of my adoration and love. <A theo- 
logian proffers me his aid, and describes the mode 


of my knowledge of God, which, he says, comes 


Oe 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. Sb 


to me only by way of Negation, Causality, and 
Eminence.* He proceeds to analyze the Divine 
nature into its different aspects of First Cause, 
Absolute, Infinite, and Unconditioned. Some 
other reasoner tells me that, the Absolute and 
Infinite being independent of all relation, I can- 
not conceive of them as existing ;—that if I have 
not a total, I cannot have even a partial know- 


ledge of these qualities or attributes, since “they 


* Since the above was written, we have chanced to fall upon 
Leighton’s remarks on this division of our mode of knowledge 
of God, which are so much to our purpose that we cannot refrain 
from citing them. ‘‘ The very terms that are used to express 
these ways show what a faint knowledge of the invisible Being 
is to be attained by them; so that the last two may be justly 
reduced to the first, and all our knowledge of this kind called 
negative. For to pretend to give any explanation of the Divine 
essence as distinct from what we call his attributes, would be a 
refinement so absurd, that under the appearance of more accurate 
knowledge, it would betray our ignorance the more.”—Theologi- 
cal Lectures, No. XXI. 

4* 


38 THE FORMATION OF 


are names indicating not an object of thought or 
consciousness, but the mere absence of the con- 
ditions under which consciousness is possible.” 
Another writer, equally positive in opinion and 
keen in argument, would force upon me the con- 
clusion, that the object of my investigation is not 
natural or revealed religion at all, but the human 
mind in its relation to religion;—that all I may 
behold of this wondrous universe is not known to 
me as it exists, but only according to the “ form,” 
—the known characteristics zmposed by that mind. 

The friends of the perplexed and suffering Job 
were prompt to reply to his questionings, most in- 
genious in argument, eloquent in language, and 
quite as confident of the resulting conviction from 
their rather protracted reasonings as any modern 
metaphysician we can produce. But they proved 
“miserable comforters.” Truly, we fear some 
of our masters in theology are but indifferent 


teachers of Christianity. Blind guides you are 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 39 


through this dark labyrinth of life! Some of its 
crooks and turns you may have learned, but you 
are utterly unable to bring me out into the light 
and air, for lack of which I stumble and faint. I 
went to your pages for truth, and you gave me 
speculation! I besought you to show me where 
I might find the bread of life, and you pointed me 
to the stone of your unsatisfying, unnourishing 
systems and formulas! It is true that in the sub- 
tilties of many of our theological writers, the 
student may find a higher training, and may se- 
cure a more perfect command of his own powers 
by thus penetrating into obscure regions, and 
struggling with intangible and unconquerable op- 
ponents. The discussions of the schools may be 
of use to engage the learned infidel with his own 
weapons, and to foil him by his own practised 
warfare; but, the victory is more brilliant than 
substantial,—is exhausting to the combatant and 


almost profitless to the world. It is specially on 


40 THE FORMATION OF 


the inquirer into the truth of Revelation that we 
urge the insufficiency of metaphysical theology. 
We are speaking, let it be remembered, for tlie 
ordinary mind, for the simple seeker after a rea- 
sonable and practical faith in divine things, for 
him who foot-sore and travel-worn, recks little of 
the curious or beautiful objects by the way, in his 
eagerness to reach the place of rest, and the foun- 
tain which shall quench his thirst, and of which 
he has heard, that those who drink shall thirst no 
more forever. Such an one, perchance, asked of | 
the sea with its wonders, to declare the cause of 
things, and the wisdom of their creation. The 
depth said, It is not in me. He weighed silver 
and gold for the price thereof, and still it was 
withheld. He brought the more precious gold of 
Ophir, the onyx and the sapphire, but the know- 
ledge of it could not be exchanged even for finest 
jewels, for its price was far above rubies. Hid 


from the eyes of all living, only can it be obtained 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 4] 


by the gift and teaching of Him who “turneth 
wise men backward and maketh their knowledge 
foolish;” and who bids the humble seeker after 
truth pass on, by an untried path, to knowledge 
and to peace. God understandeth the way thereof; 
he knoweth the place thereof, and unto man he 
saith, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, 
and to depart from evil is understanding.* _ 

Here, if nowhere else, is pointed out the inti- 
mate relation between philosophy and religion, 
between right thinking and right doing; here is 
science, both natural and moral, indissolubly 
joined to theology—to the knowledge and love of 
God. 


* See Job xxvili. 


CoHVAE eDGE a Lsale 


DOUBTERS OF CHRISTIANITY DIVIDED INTO THREE 
CLASSES AND DESCRIBED. 


Dovsrers on the subject of religion may, ina 
general way, be divided into three classes. For 
convenience in describing them, rather than with 
strict verbal propriety, we call them accidental, 
voluntary, and involuntary doubters. 

The first of these classes we consider to be 
made up of those whose doubts are, in a great 
measure, independent of themselves, and arise 
chiefly from defective education, evil influences, 
or want of direction and access, in special in- 
stances, to the sources of information. To the 
minds of such, the Bible itself affords continued 


occasion of perplexity, which the economy of the 


THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF, 43 


natural creation, the history of man, the general 
conduct and received opinions of the mass of man- 
kind, superficially observéd and incorrectly ap- 
plied, do not in any degree contribute to remove. 
The evil in this case is not very difficult. to over- 
come. Exhibit the discoveries of science which 
bear upon the statements of the Bible; point to 
the testimony of the wise and learned; establish 
thus on the right grounds the credibility of the 
Gospel, and in the greater number of minds of 
this class the mists of doubt readily disappear be- 
fore the genial ray of the dawning sun of truth. 
Voluntary doubters are in a condition of un- 
belief, not altogether on account of ignorance or 
mental indolence. In common, perhaps, with all 
doubters, but more perceptibly in their case, 
they fail to receive the teachings of Christianity 
as a welcome and governing rule of life and source 
of hope, on account of the entire want of corres- 


pondence between it and their own internal state. 


44 THE FORMATION OF 


“The natural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him.” 
They, minding earthly things, cannot discern the 
heavenly, which, to behold, is at once knowledge 
and peace. An openly avowed, even boastful un- 
belief, a sneering indifference, or a reluctant as- 
sent to the consequences of even admitted truths 
of Revelation, unfollowed by any practical work- 
ing, is observed in this class, which, as to the 
latter particular, is composed, we suspect, almost 
as much of professed believers in Christianity 
as of acknowledged sceptics. He who engraved 
on the clasp of his Bible, Thou fool! that 
ever, before opening the book, he might be re- 
minded of the limits of his understanding, would 
be the fittest human instructor of such. Skill- 
ed, perhaps, in human learning, philosophers— 
if we may call such those who love only this 
world’s wisdom—they yet institute no inquiry, 


much less make any provision regarding that 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 45 


future which they at least admit to be possible. 
Secure in the Abana and Pharpar of selfish indul- 
gence and intellectual pride, they hardly will be 
healed until some interposition of Providence 
bring them to the little Jordan of humility, obe- 
dience, and faith in the cleansing and restoring 
mercy of Christ. Pride, coldness, love of self 
and the world, induce them theoretically to reject 
a system, which once admitted would compel 
them to some feeble and wavering consistency 
with its principles. How are they to come to the 
light, if they more love the darkness ? 

But our chief concern is with neither of these 
already mentioned classes, but with those whom 
we have termed involuntary doubters. It is a 
comparatively small, and, on some accounts, deeply 
interesting class, made up, to a great extent, of 
persons who are neither ignorant of Revealed 
truth, nor, in any ordinary sense, averse from it— 


opposed to it either in theory or practice. With 
5 


46 THE FORMATION OF 


a portion of this class, the difficulty of believing 
consists in the morbid action of a sensitive tem- 
perament, whether this result from disease or 
from want of balance between the intellectual and 
emotional nature. With another portion, it re- 
sults from a mental training which has taught too 
stubborn an analysis, and induced an overweening 
attachment to mathematical proof. This tendency 
is frequently observed in the physician, the che- 
mist, and the geologist; and if, as some think, in- 
fidels are found more particularly among scientific 
men, it is not that their studies produce rebutting 
testimony or unanswerable objections to the Chris- 
tian system, but that the peculiar character of 
their investigations tends to unfit them for the 
different, though equally forcible deductions of 
moral science. They will receive nothing as true 
but that which is apprehended by the senses; and 
therefore, though compelled in this complicate 


worldly system to admit many, according to them- 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 47 


selves, unproved propositions, they concede to these 
only an unwilling assent. Others, again, exhibit the 
peculiarity of a highly imaginative temperament in 
union with a cautious and fastidious mental habit, 
—a passionate attachment to truth in its simplest 
forms and severest modes of statement. Owing 
to the natural vigour, or careful training of the 
reasoning faculty, they are characterized by faci- 
lity of analysis and love of demonstration. From 
the no less potent influence of imagination, they 
may have derived such quickness of perception, 
such skill in the reproduction and combination 
into new forms of primary ideas, that these pow- 
ers are sometimes unconsciously applied to other 
than their legitimate objects. In Revelation, the 
Unseen and Infinite is made sufficiently marked 
and definite for our practical purposes. But in 
its filling up it is, perhaps necessarily, viewing our 
humanity, at any rate, unalterably, vague, faint, 


and irregular. If the leading and beautifully con- 


48 THE FORMATION OF 


cordant faculties of reason and imagination can be 
conceived as either continually conflicting, or as 
exciting a morbid working by their joint influ- 
ence, it is in relation to the objects of religious 
belief in minds thus constituted. Thus, in 
opinion and practice, there is a feeble, waver- 
ing and imperfect action, singularly contrasted 
with the energy and training of the powers in 
operation. One is reminded of the quivering and 
tottering of a mighty and beautiful structure 
which rests on an insufficient basis ; and well is it 
for the soul if, staid by the Gospel and by the 
mercy of Christ, it fall not over into miserable 
dejection and hopeless unbelief! We seek not 
mere antithesis when we say, that for such minds 
there is weakness in their strength, despair in 
their hope, and untold misery in every glimpse- 
like view of the attainable peace of this life, and 
the unspeakable joy of that which is to come. 


Fearful is sometimes their way through this dark- 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 49 


ness. Hideous spectres start up before them 
when “faint, yet pursuing” the one goal, they 
would behold the light-crowned summit of rest 
and sight. Voices, as of mocking fiends, ery to 
them in their more hopeful moments, There 7s no 
God ; there is no hereafter ; and in vain you pray 
and labour and hope. In their daily outgoings, in 
their social intercourse and sweet family converse, 
in the resort of fashion or the mart of gain, in the 
din of the crowded thoroughfare, in the solitude 
of the desert, or the more perfect solitude of sur- 
rounding darkness and sleep, the keen blade of 
doubt ever hangs quivering over their heads, and 
to end the anguish of their uncertainty, they are 
tempted either to rush madly into the unknown 
future, or, turning to earth their once heaven- 
directed gaze, intoxicate themselves with its 
pleasures, and drown the devouring torment in 
wretched oblivion of all higher good. A misera- 


ble policy, surely ; for, if there be no future, still, 
5% 


50 THE FORMATION OF 


who, once asked in our hearing a living divine, 
would be for twenty, fifty, seventy years a brute ? 
Of all men, these, truly, are “most miserable ;” 
for the case supposed by the Apostle is, to them, 
in some sort a reality :—the Saviour, whom they 
would gladly accept, is to them as if he had nel- 
ther died nor risen. If they pray, it is as the 
wounded soldier of Waterloo, who, more smitten in 
spirit than in body, cried in unutterable anguish 
of doubt, “ God, if there be a God, save my soul!” 
Their experience reverses that of most sceptics. 
Ordinarily, the intellect is convinced, but the 
heart untouched. With them, the consenting 
heart has believed unto righteousness, and their 
outward bearing is as if they had been with Jesus. 
They see an exceeding beauty in the scheme of 
Redemption, and the more common and familiar 
mysteries of our Faith create in them little uneasi- 
ness. Hstablish to them the existence and govern- 


ment of God, the immortality of the soul, the 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. on 


genuineness of Revelation, and they ask no more. 
They could not cavil at any arrangement of once 
conceded Infinite wisdom, nor mistrust any mani- 
festation of once discerned Infinite justice and 
mercy. ‘A God allowed, all other wonders 
cease’ to perplex their undertanding. But com- 
fortless—orphans, indeed, in God’s world—they 
go mourning, My Beloved has withdrawn himself 
and is gone: “I sought him, but I could not find 


him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


CONSIDERATIONS PERTINENT TO THE SUBJECT AND IMPOR- 
TANT TO THE INQUIRER INTO CHRISTIAN TRUTH. 


Havine endeavoured to describe the condition of 
mind of the involuntary unbeliever, we would now 
offer a few suggestions which may tend to the 
regulation of his thoughts, and to the moderation 
of that mental excitement which, in extreme 
cases, as has been remarked, runs into a reckless 
neglect and contempt of religious obligation, or 
subsides into the sullen and hopeless apathy of 
despair. There are some considerations which are 
of indisputable value in the grand array of Chris- 
tian evidence. They are truths to which no un- 
certainty is attached, and which the mind can 


without hesitancy receive and rest on. Such are 


THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. as: 


the evident design in creation; the corresponding 
particulars in belief in all ages and many nations ; 
collateral uninspired testimony; the impossibility 
of bringing about by human means the results 
accomplished in the first ages of Christianity ;* its 
effects as a system on the subsequent condition of 
mankind; its adaptedness to the wants and suffer- 
ings of human nature; the mutual contradictions 
of many sceptical theories and their inability to 
explain certain facts which nevertheless they are 
obliged to account for. These and many other 
points that might be adduced, are important, if 
not conclusive, and should never be lost sight of ; 
—nay, like Christian’s roll in his bosom, should 
be cherished and reviewed when the shadows of 
doubt are thickening, and the mysteries of Chris- 
tianity rise before the seeker after truth, seemine- 
ly inaccessible to his faith and hope. 


* See for a most impressive statement of this particular, Resto- 


ration of Belief, Part I. 


54 THE FORMATION OF 


The satin starting point must be fixed and 
retained, that divine things cannot any more be 
subjects of demonstration than the ordinary moral 
propositions which it never occurs to us to dispute, 
because they are not susceptible of mathematical 
proof. 

It must be constantly remembered, that if but 
little advance should seem to be made in proving the 
truth of the Gospel, still more at fault will one be 
in proving the theories of its opponents. In other 
words, if men cannot be satisfied to accept Revela- 
tion as the word of God, still more difficult will it 
be to reject it. All the marshaled force of infi- 
delity has never been able to do more than attack 
the fortress, nor to establish, either on the ground 
of right or prowess, its claim to possess it. 

Again, there is an error, common even among the 
advocates of Christianity, against which our often 
quoted Arnold has sounded, so far as we know, 


_ the most distinct warning. “There is no end,” 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 55d 


he remarks, “‘to the mischief done by the mistake 
of opposing faith to reason. Faith is properly 
opposed to sense, and is the listening to the dic- 
tates of the higher part of our mind to which God 
speaks, rather than to the lower part of us, to 
which the world speaks. The Scriptures never 
oppose faith to reason.” Many, it is true, speak 
of faith not being against, but above reason. But 
this, though involved in the thought of Arnold, 
is not, as it seems to us, precisely or wholly what 
he wishes to convey. Faith and reason move 
side by side, and in a sense are never parted. 
Faith is indeed reason in its highest exercise. It 
is reason casting off the shackles of sense, moving 
freely amid the relations of man to his Maker. To 
speak with greater accuracy, it is the same mind 
which now acts on the relations of sensible and 
present things, and now, on those, so far as they 
can be discerned, which subsists between the in- 


finite and finite, the seen and unseen. Reason 


56 THE FORMATION OF 


areues from the offered evidence the truth of 
Christianity; and, reason still, though with another 
name, it takes there its fearless stand, and gazing 
into distant, immeasurable space, enables the soul 
to anticipate with sweet assurance and placid 
smile, that glorious heaven which yet, for “a little 
while” it may not behold. 

Once more; in order to enter honestly upon 
the effort to receive as truth God’s revealed word, 
the condition of the body must be well under- 
stood. Itis not needful to repeat at length the 
statements concerning the intimate connection of 
the body and spirit. Our consciousness supplies 
the fact as perfectly as it can be deduced from 
the more remarkable exemplifying phenomena of 
either psychology or physiology. But we remain 
often ignorant, not of the fact, but of its multi- 
form and mixed applications. The subject of re- 
ligious melancholy imputes mistakenly the pecu- 


liar symptoms of his disease to some moral cause 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 57 


with which it has no connection. Unaware of any 
unusual morbid influence, he supposes the men- 
tal sluggishness or excitement—the rapid, hurried 
life in his veins, the earthly and sensual tendency, 
the exhausting restlessness and disquiet, to pro- 
ceed from moral deficiencies, or deems them, as 
they doubtless often are, the special temptations 
of Satan. But more often than he suspects is 
the disease chiefly physical, and not, we hum- 
bly believe, is he, in the eye of Him who knoweth 
what is in man, and judgeth righteously, invari- 
ably responsible for the more marked and vio- 
lent manifestations of his infirmity. Much, in- 
deed, may be done for the material nature by 
the resolute, persistent action of the spiritual. 
Many forms of nervous disease are far more sus- 
ceptible of moral than physical treatment; and 
those are in general the physician’s most dis- 
couraging patients, who possess least power of 


self-control, energy of volition, and calmness of 
6 


58 THE FORMATION OF 


temperament. Biography is full of instruction 
and confirmation as to this statement of the influ- 
ence over bodily, or even combined bodily and 
mental malady of a disciplined understanding, an 
enlightened conscience, a determined will, or a 
strong conviction. Look at Pascal. With such 
malformations and derangement of the brain and 
other portions of the body that he was “born to 
anguish beyond the reach of remedial art;” aggra- 
vating this unavoidable suffering by an irrational 
and fanatical self-denial, so that there could be 
“no enjoyment of mental or corporeal existence,” 
he, despite these almost unparalleled physical and 
other remarkable posthumous obstacles, achieved 
an enduring celebrity, and may be deemed “great 
among the great in the mathematical and physical 


sciences,” and unequalled in his day as a “master 


of the powers of language and argument” in the 


field of general literature as in that of ethical and 


Christian discussion. Read the touching and sug- 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 59 


gestive memoir of Alexander Cruden. See him 
stricken down when a youth by an affliction from 
which his sensitive and earnest mind never fully 
recovered, during all his life the occasional inmate 
of a mad-house, and devoting every sane interval 
to unremitting and seemingly uncheered literary 
labour, and to an active and self-denying benefi- 
cence. Observe that he accomplished a work 
“which will live as long as the English language.” 
If his madness was “softened into eccentricity,” 
or, in its paroxysms, was modified by some intel- 
lectual and philanthropic project, it was owing, 
remarks his biographer, to that absorption of mind 
which such a work as his Concordance must have 
occasioned. No less, we infer, was it owing to the 
discipline of that self-application and practical 
study of the Scriptures which he recommended to 
others, and to the unvarying, though in his mental 
darkness, sometimes ill-directed aim, “to promote 


the welfare and happiness of his fellow creatures.” 


60 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 


In his ministrations to the desponding, the di- 
vine sometimes discovers that he intrudes into the 
province of the physician; and as often, we are 
assured, the physician might yield to the divine, 
and learn with wonder the restoring power of a 
spirit at peace with self, with the world, and with 
God. More frequently, perhaps, than we suspect, 
is the bodily miracle performed by the spiritual 
blessing alone; and he who hears the longed- 
for accents, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee!” 
will walk forth, clad in newborn strength, and 
elorify God for the strange things which he 
hath wrought, and for “the everlasting consola- 
tion and good hope through grace” which shall 
henceforth both comfort his heart and establish 


him in every good word and work. 


CHAPTER V-. 


THE DOUBTER DIRECTED FOR THE RESOLUTION OF HIS 
DOUBT TO A CLOSE ADHERENCE TO SCRIPTURE PRECEPT 
AS THE RULE OF LIFE. 


In stating our small reliance on the study 
of the Metaphysics of Theology for aid in 
the formation of Christian belief in the mind of 
the ordinary and untrained but earnest thinker, 
we referred to Scripture revelation as the ulti- 
mate source of our knowledge of God and our 
relations to him. We endeavoured to represent 
fairly that all lower investigations may impart 
to the scholar added facility in the develop- 
ment of his views, and enable him more fully 


to parry the side thrusts and avoid the back 
6* 


62 THE FORMATION OF 


lunges of wily and infidel adversaries. _ But the 
theological argument which is not chiefly based 
on the Scripture, is a bowing wall and a tottering 
fence around the citadel of faith. The boldest 
seeker after divine truth will sink in _ uncer- 
tainty and speculation if he learn not before it 
is too late that it is not enough to hold with light 
and careless touch to the only support of revealed 
truth which floats on the broad sea of this myste- 
rious universe, but ceasing his efforts and strug- 
gles, forgetting alike his acquired arts and sup- 
posed strength, must cast himself wholly, help- 
lessly, full length, shall we say,—upon this only 
means of safety and life. 

It is then to the Scripture, viewed simply as 
a rule of life, not as a system of belief, that we 
would now direct the involuntary sceptic for relief 
and peace. We cannot hold out to him the pros- 
pect of conviction. Had there been a mode hu- 


manly devised, by which assurance might with 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 63 


certainty take the place of doubt, we need not 
have taken up the pen, nor offered to the troubled 
and wandering soul our imperfect consolation and 
guidance. In this, as in every other arrangement 
of our condition, we must recognize the sovereign 
will of our Maker. “ What should be the reason 
that such a good man should be all his days so 
much in the dark?” “There are two sorts of rea- 
sons for it;” answers Greatheart: “One is, the 
wise God will have it so; some must pipe, and some 
must weep.” Even if a degree of happiness and 
repose is attained to, it may often happen that the 
suggestions of an earthly nature, the pride of un- 
derstanding, and the assaults of the Evil One, will 
cause the doubter to waver, and, perhaps, to fall 
back into the darkness and despondency whence 
he had been drawn. Should he escape this 
mournful experience, he may still be visited with 
terrible misgivings and apprehensions. Bunyan 


tells us, that all through life the thought would 


64 THE FORMATION OF 


come into his mind, perhaps the Scripture is a 
falsehood; and nothing, he says, can convey the 
shock of that momentary impression. And yet 
this for-a-moment-doubting Bunyan is he who 
seemed to have looked in at Heaven’s portals, and 
to have brought back to a no longer regarded 
earth, the abiding remembrance of perfected holi- 
ness and happiness. His faith—we might almost 
say his vision—glows in his writings, raised him 
above no ordinary measure of life’s sufferings, and 
overmastered a nature impressive, vehement, and 
impassioned beyond the common. His faith, did 
we say! Rather the indwelling grace of God, the 
prevailing might of Gospel truth. “The great, the 
rich, the infinitely merciful God did not take this 
advantage of my soul, to cast me away, *** but, at 


the last, when the set time was come, did set me 


down blessedly on the truth of the doctrine of 


Jesus Christ.” Many saints have, like Peter, fol- 


lowed their Saviour “afar off;” and how many, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 65 


now, we trust, safely come to their journey’s end, 
can recall that, “as they followed they were 
afraid ?” 


We have stated, perhaps in our desire to meet 


fairly the perplexities of the doubter overstated, 
the difficulties of the evidence of Christianity. If 
honestly investigated, it is, we believe, conclusive 
to the minds of most men. To him, for reasons 
which we have already presented, it is insufficient. 
We presume that he has given to it a candid and 
serious attention. He has not stumbled at only . 
apparent inconsistencies, nor, if he has listened to 
the assertions and arguments of infidels, has he 
refused to lend an equally patient hearing to the 
denials and refutations of Christians. We sup- 
pose him to have been superior to a mere verbal 
difficulty, and not to have surrendered that on 
which every hope depends, and denounced the 
credibility of the record, because he cannot decide 


a date or doubtful translation; because glass is 


66 THE FORMATION OF 


mentioned in the Scripture* before we have any ac- 
count of its invention, or, because the pillar of salt,+ 
spoken of in Genesis, is now nowhere to be seen. 
If we conceive rightly the attitude of his mind, 
he is a doubter, not a sceptic. His is in a condition 
of suspense and uncertainty, of simple inability to 
believe. He is sensible that he has made as lit- 
tle advance in the establishment of Infidelity as 
in that of Christianity. He would accept the one 
only because it was an inevitable alternative, and 
the proof of the other had become to him impos- 
sible. He recognizes that a system of universal 


scepticism is, on all grounds, utterly untenable.t 


* As also in profane history, in the narration of Archimedes 
burning with glasses the Roman fleet, and probably by Tacitus 
in the word glesum, a kind of amber, and so named from its 
clearness. 

+ Also rendered an everlasting token or memorial. 

{ The unphilosophical character of atheism is more clearly 
and unanswerably put by Sir James Mackintosh, than by any 


other writer whom we have consulted on this subject. “As those 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 67 


IIe perceives that from atheism—that “belief 
that there is no belief”—he has nothing to gain, 
absolutely nothing in this life, and, without ques- 
tion, nothing in its ensuing annihilation. Still, 
between him and the full acknowledgment of 
Christianity, there seems fixed a great, impassa- 


ble gulf. In deep despondency, he is ready to 


dictates of experience which regulate conduct must be the objects 
of belief, all objections which attack them in common with the prin- 
ciples of reasoning, must be utterly ineffectual. Whatever attacks 
every principle of belief, can destroy none. As long as the foun- 
dations of knowledge are allowed to remain on the same level, be 
it certainty or uncertainty, with the maxims of life, the whole sys- 
tem of human conviction must remain undisturbed. When the 
sceptic boasts of haying involved the results of experience and the 
elements of geometry in the same ruin with the doctrines of reli- 
gion and the principles of philosophy, he may be answered—that 
no dogmatist ever claimed more than the same degree of certainty 
for these various conditions and opinions; and that his scepticism, 
therefore, leaves them in the relative condition in which it found 
them. Universal scepticism involves a contradiction in terms, 


and is an attempt of the mind to act without its structure,” 


68 THE FORMATION OF 


abandon all further investigation, and is persuaded 
that nothing but supernatural intervention can 
bring him conviction and peace. It may be so. 
Only by the power of God can the load of unbe- 
lief be removed, and possibly it is the will of God 
that he shall carry it to his life's end. The be- 
lieving Christian, as he considers this unhappy 
condition of mind, reflects that “ our mental laws, 
like our moral passions, are designed to serve the 
purposes of our earthly culture and discipline. 
Without the possibility of temptation, where 
would be the merit of obedience? Without room 
for’ doubt, where would be the righteousness of 
faith ?”* 

We repeat, we dare not engage to furnish the 
doubter with the effectual means of ridding himself 
of his doubts. We think we have, in the progress 
of our remarks, sufficiently indicated the sources 
of information and modes of reasoning which 


* Mansell’s Limits of Religious Thought, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 69 


establish the faith of the majority of inquirers into 
Christian truth. We now address him with the 
hope of directing his actions, if we cannot influ- 
ence his belief. We behold him blind, helpless, 
forlorn. It is not with us to impart sight and 
strength; but gently, lovingly, with a never-relin- 
quished hold, and with a pity deeper than. for 
any human misery, we would lead him to that 
Saviour at whose bidding the blindness shall 
pass away, and the clogs and fetters of spiritual 
unbelief fall from him—he knows not how, only 
that they trammel and hinder him no longer. 

We counsel the doubter not to think so much 
as to work,—to act on the basis of Scripture doc- 
trine, even if it appear illogical so to do before 
the premises of his belief are settled. In a con- 
dition of intellectual uncertainty that can find no 
present relief, logical fairness will surely admit, 
as well as common sense dictate, the adoption of 


that question which secures the greatest, and in 
7 


70 THE FORMATION OF 


this case, the only positive practical benefit. One 
who has been no unmoved or incurious spectator of 
the mental struggles of others, says of moral, what 
we may here also apply to intellectual perplexity: 
“Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or 
uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the 
dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to 
heart, which to me was of invaluable service: Do 
the duty which lies nearest thee which thou 
knowest to be a duty. Thy second duty will 
already have become clearer.” 

By the unvarying direction of the mind to some 
special interest, either temporal or spiritual, it 
becomes incapable of rightly estimating and mea- 
suring other equally important, though, perhaps, 
less imperative claims; as the eye, long adjusted 
to a close focus, beholds in the distance only un- 
defined forms. It is a uniform law, that all our 
physical and moral powers must find their pro- 


portionate action, else imperfect development will 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 71 


ensue. If contemplation is made the chief busi- 
ness of life, its power will become impaired, or, we 
might say, destroyed, so far as any resulting use- 
fulness is concerned. “Every study,” says a writer 
who was as accomplished in his scholarship as he 
was earnest and successful in his more active life 
work, “requires to be tempered and balanced with 
something out of itself, if it be only to prevent 
the mind from becoming one-sided or pedantic; 
and ascending higher still, all intellectual study, 
however comprehensive, requires spiritual study 
to be joined with it, lest our nature itself become 
one-sided, — the intellect governing the higher 
reason, the moral and spiritual wisdom stunted 
and decaying.” If, then, there is a morbid undue 
action of mind in relation to objects of religious 
apprehension, the dictate no less of philosophy 
than of common sense is to restore a healthful 
condition by rest as to one set of agencies and 


exercise as to another. 


12 THE FORMATION OF 


Study, then, the Scripture, you who are in a 
state of religious doubt, less to ascertain precisely 
what you are to believe and how you are to hold doc- 
trines susceptible of various interpretations, than to 
find in what manner, supposing the authority of 
its teachings undisputed, you are to conduct your- 
self in reference to them. From the continual 
watching of your mind, the observation of its 
capability on the one side and inability on the 
other, turn your attention to the world around 
you, of which you form but a fractional portion. 
Put it to yourself if, whatever you believe, or how- 
ever these great questions are to be settled, you 
will ever stand gazing at what you cannot see, 
unemployed and useless where there is so much 
actual and urgent demand for your exertions. 
Say not you cannot find an object adequate to 
engage or worthy to retain your attention and 
interest. There is no conceivable condition in 


which you can be utterly bereft of the power of 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 73 


benefiting others. The mode may be indirect, the 
result postponed or uncertain, the work itself very 
small,—the cup of cold water only; but this scan- 
tiness of tangible result is nothing, so far as the 
inward principle is concerned, and is everything, 
reckoned by that balance in which the widow’s 
mite outweighed the largest unloving, easily spared 
offering of the proud and self-righteous. It is to 
carry you out of self and conduct you to Him, 
that those commandments were given which refer 
to God. It is no less to carry you out of self, as 
well as to secure the general good, that those 
commandments were given which refer to man. 
Then are you spiritually most secure, then are 
you most heavenly-minded, most like the Saviour 
whom you seek to imitate, when, directing your 
efforts primarily to the obedience of his precepts, 
and ‘not to the direct conflict with unbelieving ) 
thoughts, you “feed his flock,” and “follow him 


whithersoever he goeth;” whithersoever,—to what- 


U* 


74 THE FORMATION OF 


ever condition and duty,—he goeth,—his teachings. 
his Spirit, may conduct you. You may not be able, 
‘like Howard or Elizabeth Fry, or like another, in 
our own time and country, not, perhaps, surpassed 
by them in self-denying labour and constraining 
love for the souls of the sinful and suffering, to visit 
the prisoner, or relieve in person the wants of the 
hungry, the naked, and the sick. But in your 
own home, in your neighbourhood, as you walk 
the street or travel for business or pleasure, as you 
enter the humble habitation of the poor or the 
surely more destitute mansion of the rich, if 
amone its treasures and adornings it lack the 
“nearl of great price,” there must be some occa- 
sion for deeds of love, some burden you can bear, 
some claim upon your head or appeal to your 
heart. 


Mark your divine Exemplar. Lver as he | 


was passing by, or, with another object primarily 


in view, he paused to relieve the suffering, 


— 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. Lo 


and to instruct the ignorant. He “must needs 
vo to Samaria;” and, as wearied on his way, 
he rested by the well, when most would have 
relaxed not only bodily effort but mental ac- 
tivity, with surpassing delicacy and grace he 
revealed to the erring woman who went thither 
to draw water, his power and willingness to 
forgive and receive her. “As Jesus passed by - 
he saw a man which was blind from his birth;” 
and on this unfortunate, now doubly blessed, 
dawned the light of day and the light of truth. In 
the exercise of Christ’s special work, “as he was 
teaching,” surrounded by proud Pharisees and criti- 
cal doctors of the law, who had come to him from 
every town of Galilee and Judea and from Jeru- 
salem, and in the full tide of successful eloquence 
and application, “for the power of the Lord was 
present to heal them,” he beheld and accepted 
the faith of seemingly intrusive friends, who little 


regarded established forms and outward propri- 


76 THE FORMATION OF 


eties, so that they could but bring their wretched 
paralytic into the presence of the great physician. 
Zaccheus, gazing on him as he passed, was called 
to receive for himself and his household the know- 
ledge of salvation, and blind Bartimeus “in the 
highway side” beheld and followed his Lord. 

If you thus watch continually for opportuni- 
ties of usefulness, you will soon wonder how, 
when you once thought them so uncertain and 
rare, they have became numerous and imperative. 
A necessity will seem laid on you to study, not 
for selfish ends or with prying curiosity, but with ° 
earnest and tender benevolence, the hearts and 
lives of your fellow beings. Not only that day 
will seem lost which has not known “ commerce 
with the skies,” but that which has been marked 
by no effort to relieve, to strengthen, and to 
cheer. 

Jt does not consist with the object of this little 


work to examine in order and detail the duties 


oon 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. iT 


which we owe to God, to man, and to ourselves. 
We have spoken generally of duties to man in 
order that we might impress on the minds of the 
doubting the value to themselves of a reflex influ- 
ence in the discharge of this class of obligations. 
If the Scriptures are made, as we have urged, the 
rule of life, even as the rays of the rising sun dif- 
fuse light and heat over the earth, brightening 
and warming all into life and beauty, so will divine 
truth, applied by the Holy Spirit, pervade every 
dark corner of the unbelieving. mind, and cause 
the wilderness of its moral perceptions and emo- 
tions to blossom and bring forth fruit abundantly. 
Revelation, establishing the testimony of con- 
sciousness, convinces man equally of the tempo- 
rary degradation and inherent dignity of his 
nature. The humility consequent on the one, 
and the high aspirings resulting from the percep- 
tion of the other, respectively apply to him the 


needed discipline of the present, and the needed 


78 THE FORMATION OF 


encouragement and hope of the future state of ex- 
istence. 

But the adaptation of Christianity both to the 
nature and condition of mankind, cannot be fully 
tested unless the whole mind, the intellect and 
the affections, be submitted to its regulation. If it 
sometimes, and, we believe, rarely, occurs that 
reason rejects, while the will, by the grace of 
God, accepts the authority of Revelation, let 


there be at least an undivided, unresisted do- 


minion over the heart of its teaching,—an unhin- 
dered operation of the promised work of the 
Spirit. Put on righteousness and Je? 7 clothe you. 
That blessed robe, not wholly indued, will be 
carried uneasily as a profitless burden which one 
would gladly be altogether rid of. But let it in- 
vest the whole man, and he will know its free 
and full use and its varied adaptation. It will 
shield him alike from the glowing sunshine of 


prosperity, and the fierce blasts of adversity. We 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 79 


need greater entireness and more perfect propor- 
tion in Christian development. We need a con- 
sistency with the doctrines of the Bible, and 
possibly, as some urge, with the distinguishing 
tenets of our sect. But we also need a consis- 
tency less observable, and scarcely less valuable 
in the work of spiritual training, between de- 
erees of spiritual effort and varieties of Christian 
oraces. We are apt to choose some Christian 
excellence suited to our taste and tempera- 
ment, and, with small self-denial, to cultivate 
it to the exclusion of other parts of our duty. 
We establish our Christian reputation on one man- 
ifestation of a Christian spirit, and thus learn to 
limit to it our self-examination and consequently 
our self-acquaintance. If the development of the 
body were as unequal as that of the soul, what a 
spectacle of piteous and repulsive deformity would 
it present! It may not be given to us in actual 


attainment, according to the prayer of Epaphras, 


80 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELLEF. 


“to stand perfect and complete in a the will of 
God,” but surely such may be the standard of our 
effort and hope. The “fruit” of that effort will 


be “holiness,” the “end” of that hope “ everlast- 


ing life.” 


3 help.) cod id Delt OAT 


SCRIPTURE ENCOURAGEMENT AND CONSOLATION FOR IN- 
VOLUNTARY DOUBTERS, 


Our design would be imperfectly carried out, if, 
after having presented to you the Scripture as a 
rule of life, we did not refer you to its special en- 
couragement and comfort in relation to the con- 
dition of doubt. In its pages where there is heal- 
ing for every wound, the trial of both spiritual and 
intellectual unbelief is not overlooked. We have 
even sometimes fancied that the promises of de- 
liverance from it are worded with a fulness and 
tenderness not elsewhere so observable. We may 
not here recite all those precious declarations, those 


blessed persuasions to greater trust and love, but 
8 


82 THE FORMATION OF 


we will endeavour to present some of the most 
impressive and consolatory. 

“TJ will bring the blind by a way that they 
know not; I will lead them in paths that they 
have not known; I will make darkness light be- 
fore them and crooked things straight. These 
things will I do unto them and’—blessed be our 
God forever !—* not forsake them.’ Look at this, 
trembling, panting soul! Take not off thme eyes 
from that promise. Let this voice, day and night, 
sound in thy ear and bring some peace into thy 
troubled heart. He will not forsake thee. He 
will be found of thee, if thou continue to seek 
him. Hear again: “ Who is among you that 
feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his 
servant?”—That you do; yes! though, if we may 
so say—only hypothetically, as f there were a 
God to fear and obey. Yet on the whole, it is 
your case. In your heart entirely you honour him. 


You are willing that he should reign. You do with 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 83 


the will submit to him, even if your flesh some- 
times rebel. You love the ways of truth and 
right, and discern that these are founded only on 
the nature and government of God. Your philoso- 
phy and morals are based upon the very religion 
you doubt. You assent to much of Scripture as- 
sertion, and consent, oh how heartily ! to its spirit 
and claims. You prefer to lead a pure and godly 
life, even if there should be no future of reward. 
You turn affrighted and disgusted from the license 
of atheism, and desire above all other good, faith 
in God and his revealed word. Then listen to the 
message which must be for you, and be at peace. 
“Who is among you” ** * * * “that walketh in 
darkness and hath no light? let him trust in the 
name of the Lord and stay upon his God.” Wait 
then for the Lord and hope in his word. Though 
your anxious expectancy may exceed the weary 
longing of them “that watch for the morning,” 


still hope ; for “ with the Lord there is mercy and 


84 THE FORMATION OF 


with him is plenteous redemption.” The Saviour 
has promised that if any man will do the will of 
God, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be 
of God. Thus Christian obedience is the divinely 
appointed way to Christian knowledge. 

Let us also review the history of the conviction 
of Thomas, which none who have known his 
doubts can read without new and ever deepening 
emotion. Of an earnest yet timid temperament, 
it was Thomas who, to a parting encouragement of 
Christ, objected, “Lord, we know not whither thou 
goest; and how can we know the way?’ When 
Jesus would go to Judea, and the disciples tried 
to dissuade him, because the Jews had sought 
to stone him, it was Thomas who, with all of 
Peter’s love and ardour, and more than Peter’s 
boldness, exclaimed, “Let us also go, that 
we may die with him.” In the dark hours of 
Christ’s crucifixion and burial, we may believe 
that the faith of Thomas in the word of his Master 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 85 


utterly failed him; for he exclaimed with marked 
positiveness, when told of the Saviour’s sudden 
re-appearance, that he would not believe unless a 
seemingly impossible evidence of the fact were 
afforded him. Yet he retained an interest in his 
former companions and accustomed exercises; for - 
we find him, the second Sabbath from the resur- 
rection, with the disciples in their assembling 
together. He could hardly have looked for a 
second appearance when he altogether disbelieved 
the first. Not even to the disciples was it proba- 
ble that, after eight days had elapsed, they would 
again behold the risen Redeemer, the Lord of 
life and glory, ready to ascend to his Father and 
his God, tarrying only to bless and strengthen the 
fainting souls of that little band of weak, unfaith- 
ful, but still loving and longing disciples. Having 
loved them once, he loved them unto the end. 
At length the blessed moment came to Thomas 


that ended his doubt forever,—all doubt; doubt 


g¥ 


86 THE FORMATION OF 


of Christ’s mission and attesting resurrection ; 
doubt of his own present condition and future 
safety. So gently did his Master deal with him. 
No reproach for his unbelief; no delay or test 
required; but the prompt and precise proof ac- 
corded that Thomas had demanded, and perhaps 
the only one that in his state could be of use to 
him! Happy, favoured Thomas, who yet on earth 
may walk by sight, and taste the bliss of heaven’s 
assurance! Vow he knows “the way, the truth, 
and the life.” By the Saviour’s wounds he might, 
in common with the race, obtain righteousness and 
forgiveness; but behold and wonder! it was given 
to doubting Thomas, even by the scars of those 
wounds, to anticipate the “effect of righteous- 
ness,’ and to obtain “quietness and assurance 
for ever.” Surely to him that place of assem- 
bling was the house of God and the gate of 
heaven. 


He who thought not only of his disciples, but 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 87 


of them also who should believe on him through 
their word, pronounced that a blessing, greater, 
we might almost infer than that conferred on 
Thomas, awaited those who, unlike him, without 
having seen should believe, humbly receive his 
testimony, and confide in his promises. And if 
on the mind of the doubting there dawn the 
light which only the Holy Spirit can cause to 
shine, truth, that to less thoughtful and to less 
inquiring Christians is only dimly visible, stands 
irradiated with never fading glory; and scarcely 
for their translation do they wait to see and 
hear the gracious things prepared for them in 
perfected belief, in peace with God, and hope of 
heaven. To them Christ has indeed given the 
‘Comforter to abide with them forever; and this 
Spirit of truth, as one of our own time has beau- 
tifully shown,* becomes thus in his influence 
“a present Jesus,” indwelling, transforming into 


* See “Consolation,” by Dr. J. W. Alexander. Chap. xviii. 


88 THE FORMATION OF 


his own image,—their Lord and their God! 
Nothing to do now but to fall “into those kind 
arms,’ to keep ever near to him, to listen to his 
voice, to tell him if the feet be weary and the 
way seems long, to breathe softly out their life on 
his bosom! The burden he will bear; the rough 
places he will make smooth; the mansion in his 
Father’s house he has prepared. 

It is interesting and instructive to observe the 
first emotion of Thomas on receiving his desired 
evidence. Joy for himself he must have felt,— 
the peace which passeth all understanding; but 
the outburst of the long pent up spirit was for his 
Master. In the man and teacher whom he had 
loved and followed he now beholds the Messiah, 
the Promised One, the Deliverer of his nation. 
With alternating fears and hopes he had often 
before considered the doctrine and manner of life 
of Him in whom was found ‘no fault at all,” and 


who “spake as never man spake.” But now his 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 89 


is no longer a wavering confidence. This zs his 
Saviour, his tender, forgiving, through life and 
after death his never-failing friend. “ My Lord 
and my God!” breaks in ecstasy from his lips, and 
peace dwells for evermore in his heart. | 
Such, we apprehend, will be the experience of 
those who shall enter heaven, and there first be- 
hold their Lord. Many notes of joy will swell 
their song of thanksgiving and praise, many rap- 
turous thoughts constitute their blessedness. The 
trial all over, the end attained, the prize won, the 
calling and election sure; the unconceived glory 
of that new creation bathing the soul as in a flood 
of light and beauty; the new born strength of 
body, the delighted consciousness of faculties up- 
springing into rapid and vigorous development ; 
truth no longer acquired by slow degrees of per- 
ception, memory and reason, no longer dived for 
in the ocean, dug out of the earth, or dimly dis- 


cerned in the far off firmament, but flashing on 


90 THE FORMATION OF 


the mind as the rays of never fading light on the 
eye; the fresh and immortal loveliness of the well 
known faces; the welcome borne to the ear in 
long unheard, but, ah! so well remembered tones— 
such, to our imagining, is the bliss of the re- 
deemed. But the chief, the surpassing joy we 
conceive is that at length they behold Him, to 
each one of them “my Lord and my God,’—Him 
who hath loved them to the end, and whose own 
they are, by a bond never to be broken. Long had 
they sought him with earnest desire, and of some 
of them perchance he had not been found. As in 
the absence of the most loved friend, we pore 
with eager interest over the tracings of his 
pen and the expressions of his love, find therein 
a meaning hidden to a more careless eye, and 
strengthen ourselves by this imperfect solace to 
‘bear patiently the painful separation, so had these — 
faithful servants waited the coming of their Mas- 


ter; so had they with watchful love conned each 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 9] 


precept and promise, and gathered thence every 
tender warning, direction, and encouragement. 
Oh, if they could have seen him by the way, 
have touched the border of his garment, have 
leaned on his bosom, have heard the gentle re- 
proof, “Be not faithless, but believing!” ay! 
could they have followed him to prison and to 
death! But now they see his face; they walk 
with him in white; they sit with him on his 
throne and shall go no more out from him forever. 
Shall we not reckon, therefore, that the sufferings 
of their past time are not worthy to be compared 


with the glory which now is revealed in them ? 


CHA PAVE TR iVobE 


GRADUAL FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER AND BE- 
LIEF TO BE EXPECTED FROM OBEDIENCE TO SCRIPTURE 
PRECEPT, 


Ir we cannot promise in every case to the 
doubter a settled belief consequent on a life of 
obedience to the precepts of the Gospel, we can 
at least hold out to him the prospect of a measure 
of happiness, and of deliverance from that inward 
and unavailing conflict which unceasingly dis- 
tracts him. We plead that in this effort to des- 
cribe generally the mental condition consequent 
on a course of perseverance in well doing, in 
prayer, and in study of the Scriptures, no one 
shall lay to our charge any attempt at picture 


drawing, any uufounded assertion, unwarrantable 


THE FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 93 


inference, or other unfair mode of assuming the 
question. A watchful observation, and, we be- 
lieve, a cautious admission of testimony bearing 
on this subject, as we could obtain it from the 
records of holy men, and, partially, from living 
witnesses, occasions in ourselves at least the con- 
viction that we in this matter speak forth the 
words of truth and soberness. 

We do not undertake to present in its complete 
development the mental change which we are 
about to describe, but only to mark its more dis- 
tinguishing, and, in relation to our argument, 
most illustrative and encouraging aspects. Nei- 
ther do we assign to ourselves the difficult task 
of systematic arrangement of its gradual mani- 
festations, although we have not been without 
reference to some order of detail while observing 
the outward operation of that change in relation 
to God and our fellow men, and its cxward influence 


on our intellectual and emotional nature. We 
9 


94 THE FORMATION OF 


would not be understood to predict that this 
change will speedily or invariably ensue. The 
process may be slow and the expected benefit 
long withheld. Natural temperament, bodily or 
mental disease, instability of purpose, with other 
causes, which we need not indicate separately, 
will largely effect the otherwise definite and 
ample result of a life of Christian effort. We only 
declare our conviction that a condition of compara- 
tive mental peace has been, and may again, in 
given circumstances, be attained to. We would 
not limit the grace of God. There are credible 
records of the strongest conviction, of the most 
satisfying assurance, and of a faith which seems 
almost sight, which triumphed over every form of 
suffering and ‘did not fail in the hour of torture 
and death. The promise to the watching and faith- 
fal servant of God is abundant, and verily with- 
out stint has been the bounty of its fulfilment. 
Kven on earth he has entered into the joy of his 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 95 


Lord, for that joy has been his present strength 
and his exceeding great reward. But, neither 
can we declare the period and the mode, nor 
mete out the proportion of the blessing. There 
may be within the heart, as has been said of Paul, 
a consuming fire of love to God, of zeal and joy 
in his service; and there may be only “the 
smallest spark of grace,” which scarcely through 
life retains its vitality. But He who kindled, 
will not suffer it to be extinguished. They shall 
praise the Lord that seek him. For the purpose 
of our argument, indeed, the little measure of 
peace and faith, is equivalent to the fullest pos- 
session of all diversities of spiritual gifts. 

Let our doubting reader suffer, for the sake of 
greater freedom, a direct address. 

If, aided by that divine grace which you can- 
not perhaps yet recognize, you continue in a 
course of adherence to Scripture rules of conduct, 


you will find a satisfaction, a balm for the wounds 


96 THE FORMATION OF 


within you, in even difficult and distasteful exer- 
tions. Insensibly, they will divert you from the 
absorbing contemplations which have neither 
brought conviction to your mind, nor fitted you 
for the performance of those conditions of love 
and service without which, God would not accept 
the most definite acknowledgments of your un- 
derstanding. It may comfort you to reflect that 
had you “superior light,” it would avail you 
nothing, without that “superior love” which you 
feel is gradually warming and diffusing itself 
through your heart. From the outward conform- 
ity to the law of God, we believe that you will, 
slowly, perhaps, but surely, penetrate to its inner 
spirit and deeper meaning. You once found much 
perplexity in the legal requirements of the law as 
opposed to the declared spiritual liberty of the 
Gospel. Now, you are beginning to perceive that, 
as the most perfect operation of human law is ob- 


tained by the highest morality, so, Scripture pre- 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 97 


cepts for conduct are not practically separable 
from the training of the will and the cultivation of 
holy affections. The fertile and well tilled ground 
on which the sun shines and the dew and rain 
descend, cannot but send forth fairest flowers and 
most perfect fruits. 

A sure sign in you of a growing holiness, is that 
you increasingly value the Sabbath-day. Deen- 
ing it one of the best gifts of God to man, you 
have no desire after a modern fashion to displace 
it from the decalogue.* You rejoice that, as the 
commandment to observe it was given with other 
commandments of which no Christian believer has 
disputed the authority, and which have applied to 


all ages and nations, it will ever resist all efforts 


* See, for the best condensed arguments which we have 
lately seen on each side of the question of the authority of the 
Sabbath, Robertson’s Sermon on the Religious Non-observance of 
the Sabbath; and the admirable, and to us conclusive, chapter on 
the Sabbath in Bushnell’s Christian Nurture. 

9* 


98 THE FORMATION OF 


to hack and hew it from the imperishable tablet. 
Not for all the world could offer, would you fritter 
away its solemn meaning, rob it of its blessed sanc- 
tion, and beat down the barrier which, so remark- 
ably, both divides it from the other days of the 
week, and, in preserving its integrity and use, 
permanently and perfectly unites it in influence 
to them. 

You find that you cannot live without prayer. 
You are not able, with your present unsettled be- 
lief, to account for its singular influence over your 
daily life and mental condition. No reading of 
religious books, no appeal from the preacher, 
no thoughtfulness on the things which most con- 
cern your peace, no intercourse with Christians, 
no discipline of sickness or sorrow, has the posi- 
tive and enduring effect which you distinctly 
recognize to belong to the practice of prayer. In 
connection with the study of the Scriptures,— 


which, especially in its devotional mode, is itself 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 99 


intercourse with God, for it is a reverent and 
docile listening to his word,—prayer lies at the 
foundation of all means of grace and is the life of 
every pious exercise. Under its influence, your 
intellectual operations become fuller and freer ; 
the restlessness and disturbed mental balance 
which constitute the sharpness of bodily pain, 
give place to a meek endurance and calm superi- 
ority; human affections are strengthened and 
immeasurably purified ; and you derive the ability 
to keep your resolutions and to satisfy the de- 
mands of conscience; for God, in answer to your 
petition—though you cannot yet, perhaps, assent 
to this scriptural, and‘ only possible, explanation 
of the power of prayer—is working in you both 
to will and to do. 

Would that we might pause here, and leave 
you ever as near to heaven as you sometimes 
seem to come in your approach to God in prayer. 


But faithfulness to what we have undertaken, 


100 . THE FORMATION OF 


requires that we present the alternations of your 
experience in this regard. Were it not that 
this experience attests the accuracy of our repre- 
sentation, it might be supposed we advanced ab- 
surd and irreconcilable contradictions. In your 
state of unbelief, prayer often seems to you an 
exercise so inconsistent with your want of faith, 
that if there is a God to take cognizance of it, he 
must be outraged by its emptiness and daring 
hypocrisy. You often find it your most difficult 
duty and your severest spiritual trial. You bow 
your head less in reverence than in an anguish 
which leaves you no words. When you say 
“Our Father,” you feel that he is not yours, that 
you cannot learn where to find him that you 
might come “even to his seat,” and there, with 
strong crying and tears, utter forth your complaint 
and prefer your petition for faith—only for faith. 
You go forward, but he is not there ; and back- 


ward, but you cannot perceive him. You think 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 101 


that if you could be convinced of his existence, 
you could be content to forego the present assu- 
rance of his favour; that all your life you could 
work and love for that, and wait to the end for 
his acknowledgment. You could bear the hiding 
of his countenance, if you could but feel the 
euiding of his hand. Often you cannot use the 
accustomed language of holy men, and you shrink 
from expressions of confidence and hope. If you 
could believe in Satan, you would think that if he 
“trembles” to see you on your knees, he still then 
puts forth his strongest efforts and subtlest de- 
vices. The most unyielding and obstinate phase of 
your unbelief occurs when you are hopelessly ask- 
ing God to remove it; and though you “cry aloud,” 
there seems “neither voice, nor any to answer, nor 
any that regarded.” At times, when, after the 
conflict of the day, you have sought peace and 
temporary oblivion in sleep, you strive in vain to 


escape this haunting terror, this ever gnawing 


102 THE FORMATION OF 


pain, this indescribable longing to have passed 
through the “howling wilderness” of doubts and 
fears, and to rest, like John, on the bosom of 
your Saviour. It is your condition which the 


poet describes : 


Shut up in unbelief, I groan 
And blindly serve a God unknown ; 


It is your longing which he expresses : 


Only tell me I am thine 


, 


And Thou wilt not quit thy right; 
Answer me in dreams divine, 


Dreams and visions of the night ;— 


dreams and visions which you have closed your 
eyes to court, and have prayed that they might 


be vouchsafed to soothe the continual suffering of 
your thoughts. “Restlessly desiring” Him, you 


have almost literally known what it is to 


Mourn for God in every groan— 


God in every thought require. 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 103 


But, though your bodily strength fails you, and 
your brain reels under this protracted pressure, 
with the strongest fervour and urgency we can 
pour into any like appeal, we bid you—nay! we 
solemnly adjure you—still to pray. If you droop 
and faint here, we much fear it will be a sickness 
unto spiritual death. Oh, continue to call upon 
your God! If you have no words to express all 
your need and misery, at least cry out, Lord, help 
mine unbelief! Jesus, thou Sen of God, have 
mercy on me! Plead both his willingness and 
his power. If thou wilt, thou canst make me 
clean! Was he once deaf to those cries? Did 
he repulse the miserable applicants for his mercy, 
who, we have reason to conclude, had, in many 
instances, a very imperfect understanding of the 
typical and prophetical declaration of a Mes- 
siah? who, unquestionably, had no definite know- 
ledge of their spiritual necessities, and of Christ's 


divine ability, and who sought him, ignorant, 


104 THE FORMATION OF 


perhaps, of his human condition and character, 
and simply from the pressure of their own need, 
and because they had learned the one fact, that 
“oreat multitudes followed him and he healed 
them all.” Did he bid them, in their blindness 
and halting, go wearily back to doctors of the law, 
study the promise of his coming and the fulfil- 
ment of prophecy, and return to him, if, per- 
chance, they could find a little faith wherewith to 
urge anew their request? Read for yourself, 
and let your sinking heart rise and swell within 
you as you behold the freeness, the promptness, 
the fullness, the tenderness of his mercy. The 
address, “Son!” “Daughter!” is for you. His 
hand is laid upon you. He stretches it forth to 
you sinking in the waters of affliction, and it is of 
you he asks, with a gentleness of reproof that 
must stir your soul and break up the fountain of 
your tears, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst 
thou doubt? Ah! wherefore? Have you not 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 105 


already heard those words full of tenderness and 
“encouragement, “Be of good cheer, it is I; be not 
afraid”? Has he not often proved his presence and 
his power? Has he not in your bodily need led 
you through fields of bountiful supply, and remark- 
ably interposed to succour and strengthen you? 
Has he not reproved and instructed you in your 
self-confidence and ignorance, raised your loved 
ones from the bed of sickness, and made them 
again to minister to you in sweet offices of blessed 
household affection? It is his own declaration, 
that if you come to him, he will in no wise cast 
you out. His by every title that can constitute 
propriety, he will never, unless you perseveringly 
and deliberately reject him, “quit his right” to 
the soul which he has created and redeemed; for 
not the united power of “things present” and of the 
prince of darkness, nor even that dreadful unbelief 
itself, shall be able to separate you from the love 


of God which isin Christ Jesus our Lord. 
10 


106 THE FORMATION OF 


Who, who shall in thy presence stand, 
And match Omnipotence? 
Ungrasp the hold of thy right hand, 


Or pluck the sinner thence? 


We believe that the time will come, if you con- 
tinuously and steadily walk in the only to you 
open path of prayer and obedience, when you will 
be conscious, if not of a change in your apprehen- 
sion of divine things, in your application of them 
to your habits of thought. Even now you under- 
stand certain of Matthew Henry’s beautiful and in- 
structive distinctions. If you lack the “faith of 
assurance,” you will still live by a “faith of ad- 
herence.” If you have doubts about the “reward 
after keeping God’s commandments,” you have 
none about the “reward i keeping them.” You 
thoroughly understand that the very feeblest 
“actings of faith are present aids to a drooping 
spirit, and often help us at a dead lift.” At your 


lowest ebb of both temporal and spiritual comfort, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 107 


when your heart seems to die within you, when 
you are without courage or help to wage the bat- 
tle with life and self, and your outward condition 
and daily life seem utterly dark and hopeless, you 
find a guiding gleam of light, a reviving drop of 
sweetness in the thought of the commandments of 
God. Yes! there is one thing yet remaining to 
you. There is one bond between you and your 
Lord. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” 
You can go with your load of care and fear, and 
do the next and nearest duty. That is a ground 
from which you cannot be shaken, if the chief 
strength in you be not your confidence in doing, 
but your fervour in loving. 

When you began your course of adherence to 
Scripture precept you thought much, as we have 
intimated, of its difficult self-denial, its seemingly 
numerous and unpleasant restrictions. You con- 
sidered chiefly the straitness of the way, and 


paused continually to mark with fear and dis- 


108 THE FORMATION OF 


couragement every deviating step from the path of 
religious observance. But by some means you 
have come to think less of self and more of God. 
Not that you have attained practically to a 
greater holiness, for you appear to yourself far- 
ther removed than before from the excellence you 
desire. But it is that you have almost forgotten 
to observe and measure yourself, because of your 
more frequent pondering, more intimate beholding 
of the perfections of God. Each separate attri- 
bute becomes the source of comfort and happy 
meditation. The Truth of God is applied to you 
by his Mercy, which in its turn is pledged to you 
by his Truth. His Omniscience takes in all your 
case, and advocates your every, even unconscious, 
claim on his Justice. You have so longed for and 
reverenced and prayed to Him who.is yet a doubt- 
ful Saviour, that self seems small, and sin is 
chiefly dreaded lest it may interrupt your con- 


templation of his character, and render less 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 109 


perfect your apprehension of his teaching and 
consolation. Were it not for your habitual doubt, 
and did you not ever shrink from any figurative, 
lest it might be inaccurate, portraying of his 
relation to you, you also could call this worst 
punishment of sin the hiding of his countenance 
and the withdrawal of his presence. Why spend 
your time and diminish your little measure of 
strength, by mistaken and ineffectual efforts to 
accomplish an earthly purification, by single- 
handed conflicts with the great adversary of your 
soul? 

Observe the whole of the Apostle Paul’s cau- 
tiously precise yet encouraging description of the 
modified operation of sin in the hearts of those who 
have “become servants of God.” He exhorts, 
“Tet not sin reign in your mortal body that you 
should odey it in the lusts thereof.” He tells you 
there is a “law of sin” in your members, but de- 


clares it shall not have domimion over you. “Ye 
10* 


110 THE FORMATION OF 


were the servants of sin,” but “ye have obeyed 
from the heart that form of doctrine which was 
delivered you:’—he does not say you have fully 
believed with the understanding the remarkable 
statements on which that doctrine is based, but 
you have obeyed wz from the heart,—and though 
sin dwelleth in you, and no good thing in your 
flesh, yet you “consent unto the law that it is 
good,” and the deliverance from this nature, “car- 
nal and sold under sin,’ God shall work out for 
you through Jesus Christ your Lord. You have 
also God's declaration, “I will not remember thy 
sins.” Even in this life he will not remember 
them, if they have been forsaken with a true 
purpose of new obedience. If you have broken 
his command, not therefore have you broken the 
covenant in which you stand with him. That, 
ordered in all things and sure, is based on the 
faithfulness of God and the preserving power of 


his grace, and not, blessed be his name forever! 


*, 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. ib Bp: 


on our ability to perform our part of its condi- 
tions. “The Lord speaks not of your past 
(repented) sins now; will not publish them in 
the day of judgment, or mention them in heaven, 
but will be forever silent about them, for ‘he 
remembers them no more!” Nor will he require 
us to bear the “intolerable burden” of them all 
the way heavenward. That burden fell off at the 
foot of the cross. Let, then, the burden of grief 
fall there too. If God will not remember our sins, 
why should we remember them save as the occa- 
sions of his mercy, and as incentives to a closer 
watchfulness, a deeper humility, a more fervent 
devotion! 

You cannot decide how it has come to pass,— 
and we will not urge you to conclude that it is the 
work of the Holy Spirit, rather than, as you pre- 
sume, the ordinary result of a constant direction of 
mind to one object,—but you have arrived at a sort 


of secondary belief, and are now experiencing, in a 


112 THE FORMATION OF 


degree of quietness and peace, if not of assurance 
and joy, the resulting blessedness of a life of obe- 
dience to the Gospel. You find that a change, 
gradual but positive, has passed over your senti- 
ments and inclinations. You were once careful 
for many temporal things. How dwarfed those 
mighty interests have become! What veriest 
trifles those momentous concerns now seem! 
Formerly, you were restless, anxious, tossed to 
and fro with every wind of emotion and influence. 
Now, a calm seems to pervade your whole intel- 
lectual and moral being,—not the dull stillness of 
unfed and stagnant water, but the evenness of 
those clear depths which reflect the brightness of 
heaven, and are ever freshened by the hidden and 
gushing spring of holy contemplation. 

You were once, perhaps, vain of your own 
attainments and natural endowments. If not 
exactly ready to say to your fellow-man, “ Stand 


by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. Lt3 


than thou!” you still fastidiously shrank from 
those more sparingly endowed, less delicately 
constructed than yourself. From the unfortu- 
nate you turned with scarcely restrained impa- 
tience; from the vicious, with self-approving 
contempt. But how changed are you now! 
God hath showed you that you should not call 
any man common or unclean. You have become 
moderate in your demands and patient with 
the sins and shortcomings of others through 
knowledge of self, and observation of your own 
imperfect use of opportunities and _ privileges. 
Faults of character and the sometimes more try- 
ing and distasteful faults of manner, the lack of 
outward graces and refinements,—so precious 
within their proper limits, so valueless beyond 
them,—meet alike with your tender and excusing 
consideration. The charity which hopeth, be- 
lieveth and endureth a things, is the internal 


spring of all your opinions and regulates all your 


114 THE FORMATION OF 


Judgments. Each man who passes you in the 
intercourse of life, is one of the great brotherhood. 
What matters it, if he be ignorant or sinful; what, 
even if, in his moral darkness, he has wantonly 
assaulted your life, property, or name? He will 
some time suffer the common lot of affliction, sick- 
ness and death. He had not, perhaps, the influ- 
ences and discipline which have saved you from 
an equal moral degradation. For him, Jesus 
prayed; for him, also, Jesus died. Towards him 
your Heavenly Father is long-suffering and pati- 
ent, and can vow not, afford to be so for a 
brief season? If he repent, you may dwell with 
him, each a redeemed saint in Heaven. If he 
refuse to repent, your indignation at the injuries 
done you, changes into fearful contemplation of 
his possible infinite woe. 

To every new interest, whether of business or 
pleasure, will be applied, perhaps almost uncon- 


sciously to your self,—so will you learn to run 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. . 115 


in the way of God’s commandments,—the test 
question: Is this to tend to the glorifying of God, 
to the good of my fellow-man, to the improving of 
my own nature? If it possess no such bearing, 
you drop it carelessly from you. You cannot love 
or cling to the most attractive earthly possession, 
if it be al/ earthly and fleeting. You are jealous 
of a worldly spirit in not only the ordinary busi- 
ness, but the religious labours in which you engage. 
You will beware when doing your Master’s work 
of forgetting your Master’s spirit. You will watch 
against the temptations which assail you in the 
form of duty and even of self-denial. You will 
observe that the familiarity of daily routine, the 
conduct of societies, the discussion of plans of 
benevolence—all the machinery of religion in 
fact—is too often allowed to lower the aim of 
the active Christian, to become an end instead 
of a means, and if not precisely to transform the 


service of God into a worldly object, still, to carry 


116 THE FORMATION OF 


it on with too much infusion of a worldly spirit, 
and with too large an admixture of worldly motive. 

You have become more earnest and diligent in 
the work of self-training. You seek not to clear 
yourself at the secret tribunal of conscience, but 
with that love of the full influence and operation 
of truth, which only Bible teaching can produce, 
you face resolutely the humiliating spectacle of 
your spiritual deformity, and address yourself 
seriously and persistently to all possible effort at 
amelioration. You are constantly in the spirit of 
prayer relatively to your besetting sin. You 
mark your progress in the conflict, you expect an 
answer to your petitions. You recognize that 
among the aids to self-discipline, there are few 
more efficient ‘and few less generally employed 
than the government of the tongue. You discover 
that it not only prevents the grosser evils of false- 
hood and uncharitableness, but exercises a marked 


intellectual influence in systematizing desultory 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. PET 


thought, and achieves an almost entire victory 
over the propensities which like vanity, impa- 
tience, or idle curiosity, depend for their life 
mostly on their development. Your whole self is 
exposed to your critical and oft-renewed inspec- 
tion. Every habit of body and of mind, the 
expression of countenance and gesture, the car- 
riage, manner and conversation, are brought under 
Scripture rule from Scripture motives. Since God 
hates even the high look, should not you, what- 
ever among men be your title to distinction or 
observance, “walk softly” with him, humbly and 
reverently serving him according to his own pre- 
scribed mode? If you are a follower of the “meek 
and lowly” Saviour, can you be other than simple 
in all your demeanour, and modest in your every 
utterance. You will reject every usage, however 
convenient or imposing, which infringes on Bible 
precept, or conflicts with the operation of Bible 


truth. Yet, if you really possess the spirit of 
11 


118 THE FORMATION OF 


that Saviour, you will learn something of his 
delicacy and grace, his calmness and forbearance. 
While you zealously contend for every jot and 
tittle of his law, you will remember that, as 
regards yourself, the end of his commandment is 
“charity, (love) out of a pure heart, and of a 
good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” 

You have long hesitated to assume the Chris- 
tian name, and to celebrate with his followers 
the death of the Saviour according to his appoint- 
ment. What propriety, you asked, in placing 
yourself among his disciples—you, who are “fear- 
ful and unbelieving,” and therefore by his own 
mouth condemned, with the “abominable” of the 
earth, to the dreadful penalty of the “second 
death” ? Oh, this has been to you a terrible Scrip- 
ture,—a handwriting on the wall which, far from 
merely warning you of danger and interrupt- 
ing your enjoyments, has seemed literally to 


loosen your joints and leave you without courage 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 119 


or hope! What need to serve him any longer, 
if he has already doomed you! If it were not 
for the clinging of your soul to him despite all 
that would break its hold and plunge it into 
despair ;—if it were not for the plain, direct affirm- 
ation, that “cutteth the throat of all objections,” 
“him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast 
out;”’—if it were not for the blessed declaration 
that he is “able to do exceeding abundantly 
above all that we ask or think’—a text which 
we, like Bunyan, find to be “made up of words 
picked and packed together by the wisdom of 
God for the succour and relief of the tempted, that 
they may, in the midst of their distresses, cast 
themselves upon the Lord their God;’—if it were 
not—let us sum up all in one word—that the Lord 
thinketh upon you, and “ will not suffer you to be 
tempted above that ye are able,” you would harden 
yourself in sorrow, and utterly forsake the fear 


of the Almighty. You cannot profess your faith 


120 ‘THE FORMATION OF 


in the Saviour of all men, especially of those who 
believe. To the question, Dost thou believe on 
the Son of God? you have but one answer to give; 
and that with you covers all the ground, conveys 
all your want and all your willingness—“ Who is 
he—that I might believe on him?” 

But ever the thought returns, To whom shall I 
go but to Thee? If not a full believer, a decided 
friend—at least you are not an enemy of Christ in 
any other sense than that of your natural and com- 
mon alienation. Howis it else that your heart seems 
set to keep his commandments, and that you feel 
an inexpressible delight in the fellowship of his 
followers, so that when you discover grace in their 
hearts, you think it “the greatest beauty in the 
world?” How is it that “the spirit of adoption” 
sometimes, if ever so little, prevails over “the spi- 
rit of bondage’—that if the choice were left to 
you, you would far rather serve in the “newness 
of spirit” than in the “ oldness of the letter”’—that 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 121 


“now, after you have known God, or rather,” you 
would say with the Apostle, “are known of him,” 
you feel no desire to turn again to the “ beggarly 
elements” of either worldly service or of partial, 
legal, and unwilling Gospel obedience ? No fitness 
have you, it is true, but an overwhelming sense of 
your need, no confidence in the fixedness of your 
resolutions, no expectation of increased knowledge 
or holiness that is not based on Him who is 
equally Author and Finisher of faith. You pre- 
sent yourself at Christ’s table so sensible of your 
unfaithfulness to him, that, like each disciple, you 
fear that, more guilty than others, you have be- 
trayed him by your feeble love and imperfect 
obedience. “Lord, is it I” who have honoured 
thee with my lips, while my heart is far from 
thee? Is it I who, savouring not “the things that 
be of God, but those that be of men,” am “an of- 
fence” unto thee? But you perceive also that 


the prescribed commemoration of the Saviour’s 
11% 


122 THE FORMATION OF 


love does not suppose the declaration of a perfect- 
ed work of grace in your heart, but only expresses 
your definite and deliberate purpose, and leaves 
you what you were before, and what it will be 
your security always to remain, a reverent listener 
to his word, and a careful questioner concerning 
it into your heart and way of life. With all your 
doubt and sense of unworthiness, you find at that 
table your fullest peace, and make your nearest ap- 
proach to Christ. You seem there to cast yourself 
most entirely on him. Oh, “itis good” to be there; 
to consecrate all to him; to have no plea but his 
righteousness; no hope but his promise; no 
strength save in the Comforter’s presence and in- 
fluence! It is good to go forth with rekindled 
zeal and more earnest love to do his work. You 
have called him Master and Lord, and so he 
shall be. He.has given you an example in cleans- 
ing your sin-polluted heart, and you will hence- 


forth seek to apply to your fellow men the purify- 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. LBS 


ing influence of this hope in Christ. Happy are 
you, doubting disciple, if you know these things, 
but happier still if you do them! To you this 
communion of the body and blood of the Lord 
Jesus Christ is no. mournful fast, but verily a 
“feast of fat things,” an appointed season of 
thanksgiving and praise. Often you wonder at 
the sadness and even gloom which you mark on 
the countenances of partakers with you—of many 
whose peculiar trial is not doubt as to the truth of 
Christianity or their own acceptance with Christ. 
Why, with his mark on their foreheads—for hath 
he not already, by his covenant, set it there for- 
ever ?—do we not also behold a serene joy, a hea- 
venly illumination,—the “radiancy divine” and im- 
print of the peace that passeth all understanding ? 
Making allowance for cases of special compunction 
for sin, or for the sorrow, then so keenly felt, for 
the absent or the dead, it seems strange that any 


heart should be sad, or any eyes red with weep- 


124 THE FORMATION OF 


ing, when, surely, as David sang at the dedica- 
tion of his house, God has turned our mourning 
into dancing, to the end that our glory (tongue) 
may sing praise to him and not de silent. Oh, 
why rather do not the feeble tones of this thanks- 
giving rise and swell into the glad anthem of hea- 
ven—* Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to 
God by thy blood out of every kindred and 
tongue and people and nation, and hast made us 
unto our God kings and priests; and we shall 
reign forever!” Why, when for a brief space 
“the tabernacle of God is with men,” is there not 
a fuller foretaste of the joy of his presence,—a 
more reviving consciousness of “ that blessed hope 
and the glorious appearing of the great God and 


our Saviour Jesus Christ!” 


We have thus endeavoured to describe the par- 


tial change in belief, and the total in inclination 


CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 125 


and conduct, which, we are persuaded, ordinarily 
results from a continued obedience to the precepts 
of the Gospel. The declaration, “ Hz THat FOLLow- 
ETH ME SHALL NOT WALK IN DARKNESS, BUT SHALL HAVE 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE,” is the sum, the divine confirma- 
tion, and the conclusion of our whole argument. 
We need add no more. It is with God only, who 
“hath showed hard things” to a portion of his 
people, to “prepare their heart and cause their 
ear to hear.” It is with Him only to give to our 
thought on this great subject of Faith in his word 
‘a mouth and wisdom” which some doubting and 
troubled soul “shall not be able to gainsay nor 


resist.” 


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